City in second year of study to recommend bear mitigation policies

By Erica Meltzer, Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
09/09/2013 12:51:48 PM MDT

Updated:
09/10/2013 11:19:31 AM MDT

The 590-pound bear that was killed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers on Monday near Flatirons Elementary in Boulder is shown here in a photograph taken Aug. 14 about three to four blocks from where it was put down. (Colorado Parks and Wildlife)

Those were the stomach contents of an enormous black bear shot by Colorado Parks and Wildlife rangers Monday morning, the second bear killed in Boulder in three days, and they represent a big reason that bears end up dead, wildlife officials said.

"People will say that it's senseless that we killed that bear, and I agree," said Larry Rogstad, Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Area 2 wildlife manager. "It is nonsensical. But the point that it became nonsensical happened much earlier in the summer, when people had the option to take steps to secure their garbage, and they didn't do it."

Wildlife officials shot and killed the 590-pound bear -- the largest Rogstad has seen in his career -- around 10:30 a.m. at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue near Flatirons Elementary. A much smaller bear, between 180 and 200 pounds, was killed Friday night after its presence that afternoon led school officials to lock down the same elementary school.

Both bears previously had been tagged and were considered problem animals.

The larger bear was relocated almost to the Wyoming border five years ago, but it returned to Boulder within months. It had grown so large, officials said, it no longer climbed over fences but simply barreled through them.

Wildlife officials also are keeping a wary eye on the activity of a previously tagged female bear and her two cubs who have been seen in the same area.

Poor habitat

Ecologically, Boulder should be a poor habitat for bears, Rogstad said, but anywhere from four to six bears are living mostly full-time in a small area concentrated on University Hill. That compares to one to five bears per 40 square miles in natural areas.

That so many bears can live in such a small area speaks to the abundance of food from human sources, Rogstad said. The bear killed Monday had no natural food in his stomach at all.

The day beds and denning sites found within the city of Boulder indicate the bears largely are living in town, rather than living in the mountains and venturing into the city from time to time. Rogstad said a bear was found hibernating in a crawl space in a house in Mapleton Hill several years ago, and there is "no doubt" in his mind that bears are wintering in town.

Despite the easy pickings, urban bears have much shorter lifespans. Bears in wild areas live eight to 10 years on average and can live to be as old as 15 or 16. Struck by cars, poisoned by garbage or killed by wildlife officers, urban bears average just four years, Rogstad said.

And urban living has become a way of life. The cubs of the previously tagged sow are learning how to live on garbage, not how to find wild food sources.

"This is the awful dynamic," Rogstad said. "She has two cubs who spent their entire lives in town feeding on garbage. What are the chances those bears are going to turn around and go up to the mountains and become wild bears? It's an intergenerational problem."

Education campaigns

Since 2012, Boulder officials have been conducting education campaigns about bears and trash and doing increased monitoring and ticketing in an area south of Pleasant Street, north of Baseline Road, west of Ninth Street to the city limits.

They patrol early in the morning three days a week. In 2012, of 260 trash violations, 247 were bear-related, according to a report on the first year of the pilot program.

In a survey of residents of the pilot program, 60 percent supported voluntary individual actions to secure trash and encourage other people to do so. Less than half supported fines for people who do not secure their trash, but 85 percent said the threat of a $100 fine would encourage them to do more.

Residents were nearly evenly divided in whether they would willingly pay more for trash service to cover the cost of bear-resistant trash containers.

Boulder previously scrapped a plan to test bear-resistant trash cans in one western neighborhood due to the cost. The trashcans, which feature locking lids, cost $225 apiece, and the program's budget would have covered just a few blocks.

And Western Disposal, which purchased 200 of the trashcans for its customers, has found limited interest. In addition to the cost of the bin, the company charges an extra $10 a month to cover the extra work of having to manually open the bins.

Valerie Matheson, Boulder's urban wildlife conservation coordinator, said this year monitors have seen more bear activity overall, but less in the areas targeted by the education program.

'Everything is on the table'

Current city law requires that residents secure their trash from wild animals. People with curbside trash pickup cannot put their bins out until 5 a.m. on collection days, but people can put trash out in alleys whenever they like. In 2012, 59 percent of bear-related trash disturbances occurred on days other than collection days.

Code Enforcement Supervisor Jennifer Riley said Boulder has issued 606 notices of violation and 10 summons to court for trash violations this year. That's down 7 percent from last year, in large part because the code enforcement division is down an officer.

Matheson said Boulder staffers are working on policy recommendations to be presented to the City Council in 2014 when the study period is complete and "everything is on the table," from requiring bear-resistant bins to extending the same-day restriction to alleys to increased enforcement of current rules.

"Some residents have invested in behavior changes that secures their trash from bears," Matheson said, including building enclosures, storing trash indoors and freezing organic trash before putting it out the morning of pickup. "For residents who have invested in changes, they are resistant to a broad requirement because they have already made that investment."

Colorado Parks and Wildlife also is doing a multiyear study of the effectiveness of bear-resistant trash cans at reducing problematic interactions between bears and people in several neighborhoods in Durango.

Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said the division strongly supports any efforts to increase trash enforcement in Boulder.

"The reasons these bears are dying is because they're getting into accessible trash," she said. "The bears have no reason to go back to bear habitat when they can just sit and eat people's trash."

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